As with most things, beer at Wegmans is not the usual beer aisle that you'd find at a regular supermarket. The ithaca store in particular, is pretty damn well stocked.

Prepare yourself for an entire corner of the store, with several small aisles separating the selection by region / country of origin. As they do with the rest of their store, Wegmans tries to stock the beer shelves to represent a whole world of beer unto itself. Belgium, Germany, California, you name it and you'll likely find it represented here.

Among all the choices, you'll find an impressive inventory of craft brews and imports. For example, they regularly stock more than a few offerings from breweries such as Dogfish Head, Stone, Lagunitas, Brooklyn, and others in addition to local and regional favorites such as my own town's favorite Ithaca Beer Company, and regional treats like Southern Tier Brewing Company, Upstate and even some by Ithaca's own Bandwagon brew pub. I am not aware of any other grocery store in the entire region, maybe even the state, with a selection as good as this. Note I said grocery store, not a specialty beer store. You're still better off going to Finger Lakes Beverage Center or, failing that, to Ithaca Coffee Company, if you really want maximum selection. But, hey, if you can get this good a selection while doing the rest of your shopping, well that's a huge advantage.

Supplementing the breadth of choices is a decent variety and number of options already chilled. They have an entire walk in cooler area that puts most grocery stores to shame. You'll find even many craft beer options like Great Lakes, Franziskaner and others here, already ice cold and ready to go for you!

You'll also find a large refrigerated display, much more focused on craft and local brews and imports then the general chill chest. The best thing here is that it's centered on the 'build your own six pack' concept (mix-a-six). It's $9.99 to mix a 6 of already ice cold brews. Unfortunately you have to buy a whole six pack end your options for singles the limited to a few dozen choice. But the selection does change often and tends to focus on seasonals. Not perfect, but a good option, Wish they would let you buy by the single, rather than by the six.

The beer section is fantastic! Prices are very reasonable probably the best in Ithaca. The create your own 6 pack section is always rotating in new beers to try and for $9.99 they have some excellent beers to choose from. The staff (depending on the time of the day) are pretty knowledgable of the beer section . It also happens to be where I shop for groceries so its where I buy my beer 99% of the time.

Convenient. It’s where I’m shopping anyway. Good selection. Prices reasonable. Wegman’s is the kind of grocery store that has a quiche bar so the fact that they have a lot of beer is not impressive in itself. But they have quite a bit and unlike some other places the mix and match is only 10 bucks. You can try a lot of beer that way without investing in a six pack and without going broke. They have a no questions asked return policy so if you get home and see a date on the beer that you don't like, just return it with your receipt. They have a national selection of beer plus an imports aisle.

Finished swimming at Treyman Park's waterfall pool, off to Wegmans to pick up lunch (Ithaca and FLB to follow)… Ithaca sure has a lot of traffic at damn near all hours of the day.

Atmosphere: It's a Wegmans, what more do you need to know? Other than the fact that the beer section is in the far rear left of the store, not much.

Quality: Well-apportioned, laid out logically, well-staffed (the store that is). This isn't a PA Wegmans so the beer checkout is the same as the grocery checkout.

Service: Other than stopping to ask for directions, I had no run-ins with the staff.

Selection: My first sighting of Brux! The store has the normal line-up of locals (regional and New York) paired with the well-known craft like DFH and Victory and Sierra Nevada (see: Brux). Oskar Blues cans, Ommegang, Brooklyn, plenty more.

Food: The sandwich that I took back to the park was very good; the food rarely disappoints but I'm not rating the food.

Wegman's has a pretty decent selection of beer, and since I've been buying beer there on a regular basis, I decided a review was in order.

There are six racks of beer with a few displays on the floor also. In addition, there are two big coolers with cold beer.

There is a belgian section with a bunch of unibroue, maredsous, saison dupont, a bunch of lindemans, chimay, and probably a few others.

There is a whole german rack, and another with mostly english beers.

Three racks are all American craft beer, with one being mostly beer brewed in New York State. The new york selection is pretty good actually, with Southern Tier and Middle ages bombers and 12 oz, the entire line-up of 12 oz Ithaca beers along with Eleven and White Gold, saranac, and a handful of other New York breweries are also represented.

Overall a very solid line-up with the best prices in town by quite a bit.

Now comes the bad news. Service is non-existent, which doesn't bother me, but it isn't a good thing.

The worst thing (like the first review said) is old beer. I bought two sixers of Great Lakes Dortmunder gold and only checked the date on one; the other was expired. Not just getting old, but two weeks past its expiration date. A lot of the bottles look kind of dusty, and besides SN Anniversary and the Great Lakes stuff stamped with dates, I am hesitant to buy hoppy stuff here.

Despite its drawbacks, this is a great place to drop 7-8 bucks and get a six pack of excellent beer: just be careful!

Weggies has gone pretty crazy on the beer selection (600 beers, or so they say) - but it looks like they need to advertise this! Ha! So, now there's... Well, like in the picture. From where I'm standing, to the corner plus the walk-in. On my right (out of the shot) is NY beer. Right in from of me NE beer. Next aisle over is West Coast. Then you have a row of German. The last two sections are European and Belgian.

There is a large selection. Second best in town. A lot of beers. Not, mind you, a whole lot that I would want to try. Strange. Sure, they have Sierra Nevada and Smuttynose but that's SNPA and Smuttynose Brown Dog (ok, they did have the SN barleywine but I haven't seen anything like that in a while - just the snpa). And there's Southern Tier, but, well, only a few and none of the crazy ones (they have both Hoppe's but no Pumking, Creme Brule, Javah or whatever).

And... Most of the bottles are dusty. Last time I was in I looked for dates. Some of the 6 packs I saw had them and they were at least a month past date. I can't really think that my dusty Hoppe is all that young. Maybe. Maybe they just need to advertise more and draw more people in to get the beer moving more. I don't know.

I've never been helped by anyone anywhere near the beer section. I asked about something once and got a BS answer - I'm certainly not going to ask again!

They have a decent selection of Belgians and similar. A lot of the Unibroue lineup, Saison DuPont, Corsendunk, Mardesous, and, well, a lot of other big and littler names. Maybe not enough to keep you always happy, but certainly enough so that you can have your daily drinker Belgian. The NY selection is there, at least. Some stuff from some breweries - much broader than before. No full lineups, there, which is a bit of a bummer, but enough to give you a good idea.

And so on.

I guess... It's not worth making the trip out just to go to Wegman's. If you live here and you shop at Weggies it's definitely worth buying beer there. Watch your dates when theyu exist! Hmm. Maybe we should complain about the outdated beer (it was there right when they opened the beer section - it wasn't something that's been sitting there forever) and maybe they'll change. Oh, there's a small selection of glassware, too. I appreciate the effort they're making but would like them to take it one step further!

Edit: Did I mention that you need to watch the dates? Got screwed again, darn it. It was supposed to be a hoppy beer. Like, what??? Well, quality gets knocked down a full point - it's just not worth the pain.

Selection gets knocked down, too. Lots of choices and yet... And yet... No full lineups? Geary's Pale and no HSA? Lots of breweries with their one or two big sellers but none of the GOOD stuff. Sad.

That said, locally the prices are looking better as they get worse elsewhere. And, hey, at least they show what the prices are, you know? The competition, locally, has stopped doing so because they changed so much. Well, that's great for them but totally sucks for the consumer!